BECAUSE OF WHAT I DID TO LEILA, THAT’S WHY. OH GOD, WHEN I THINK OF WHAT I DID TO LEILA!
Redpath brought his left hand up into his field of view and looked at the still-weeping cut across the ball of the thumb, the cut which helped him mark the boundary between nightmare and reality. The wound had been inflicted by a real weapon, not a phantom object like Macbeth’s dagger of the mind, and he could remember only too clearly those other wounds, the red-beaded lacerations which had transformed a young woman into an obscene doll. Neither sleeping nor waking was ever going to purge him of that particular memory and make him human again. Not ever. Not in an eternity of eternities…
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Betty said, her full-lipped face drifting into view above him. “Can I get you a drink? Something like that?”
Redpath looked away from her. “I don’t need anything.”
“You’ve been having bad dreams, love.”
“Really?” Tell me something I don’t know.
“You were talking in your sleep something awful.”
Redpath felt a dull stirring of interest. “What did I say?”
“Oh, I couldn’t make it out.” Betty glanced at Miss Connie as though seeking corroboration. “Something about being lost, I think. You were feverish, too. We nearly sent for the doctor.”
But you didn’t. What’s the matter? Are there no shady doctors available? Are John Carradine and Walter Huston and Elisha Cooke Jr tied up somewhere?
“…had us worried for a while, I can tell you,” Betty was saying. “Have you had turns like that before, love?”
“I don’t know what sort of turn I had.” Redpath wondered if they had noticed his Medic-Alert bracelet. Surreptitiously, not sure of why he was doing it, he found the bracelet with his fingertips and pushed it further up his shirtsleeve, only then realising that somebody had removed his brown suede jacket while he was unconscious.
“The main thing is you’re feeling better now,” Betty said, smiling. “What you need is a nice cup of tea and something to eat. Come downstairs and have a bite of supper with us.”
Redpath started to shake his head, then made the quite surprising discovery that he really was hungry. His stomach, it seemed, was a totally insensitive organ which demanded its customary fare regardless of the shocks and traumas experienced by other parts of his system. The idea of strong, hot tea was particularly attractive. He struggled into an upright position again, a vantage point from which he was immediately aware that his trousers were stained and crumpled, fit only for the rubbish bin. Betty’s gaze followed his.
“I had an…accident,” Redpath explained, embarrassed.
“It could happen to a bishop, love,” she said unconcernedly.
“I can’t go downstairs like this.”
“Of course not. Don’t worry about it—what size do you take?”
“What?”
Betty’s plum-coloured lips twitched into an indulgent smile. “What’s your waist and inside leg measurement?”
“Thirty-two and thirty-two,” Redpath said, wondering if he could have strayed into yet another dream in which realities were more insidiously distorted, “but you can’t…”
“Miss Connie will fix you up.” Betty glanced at Miss Connie, who nodded almost imperceptibly, stood up and left the room without speaking. Once again he was struck by a subtle wrong-ness about the old woman, and this tune was able to narrow it down to the fact that in spite of her stooped and frail appearance she moved with the lithe swiftness of a dancer. It was an attribute which he found oddly disconcerting.
“I expect you’d like a bath as well,” Betty said, moving towards the bedroom door.
Redpath got a momentary vision of two flayed, blackened bodies in a porcelain cradle. “I don’t want to put you to too much…”
“I’ll run the water and leave out some things. Come down when you’re ready, love.” Betty went out and closed the door.
Redpath listened intently and heard the sound of her descending footfalls, followed a minute later by a clank of plumbing and a muted rush of water. He rolled sideways on the bed and got to his feet, wincing at the pain which flared in his groin. The room looked cheerless and more shabby than ever in the meagre radiance from the central light. He went to the window, parted the curtains and looked out into the darkness. The houses beyond formed a high, black wall, notched in one place, and through the gap he could see the lights of Calbridge, glittering in a phosphorescent haze, looking as remote in time and space as the background in a da Vinci painting.
Gripped by an immense sadness, Redpath closed the curtains over and made his way through the room and out to the house’s upper landing. All was now quiet in the brown dimness below. He went down the stairs and correctly identified the bathroom door as the first on the left in the short middle landing which ran through to the back of the house. The light had been left on for him. He went inside and secured the door with a small and badly aligned brass bolt. The water in the tub looked slightly yellowish, but it was hot and plentiful and some clean clothing had been placed on a cane chair.
Redpath picked up the trousers and found they were a brand-new pair of tan-coloured whipcords, with a Marks & Spencer sales label still stapled to the waist band. Rubber-stamped figures on the label informed him that the garment was of the exact size he had specified. Also on the chair were a sports shirt, underpants and socks, all with their retailer’s paper tags, all crisply new.
How the…? He stared at the clothing in bafflement. That room of Miss Connie’s must be like the quartermaster’s store!
Moving mechanically, trying to fight off a renewed sense of unreality, Redpath took a bath and donned the fresh clothing. He rolled his discards into a bundle, took them up to his room and, after some hesitation, went back down through the house to the ground floor. A thin line of light was showing under the door of the front room. He went towards it, but before he could touch the handle the door was thrown open and he was confronted by the stubby, flashy-suited figure of Wilbur Tennent.
“Come on, John, come in,” Tennent said expansively. “Don’t stand on ceremony—you’re one of the family now.”
“Thanks,” Redpath mumbled, advancing into the room. A gas fire had been lit in the hearth and sitting around it were Betty York; Miss Connie, who was knitting; and—still wearing his brown boiler suit—the ill-proportioned figure of Albert, who was nursing a teacup in his massive hands. A trolley bearing plates of sandwiches and cakes was positioned in the centre of the group. Redpath noticed that everybody in the room was smiling at him and a new kind of fear began to stir at the heart of his being, like the coiling of a worm.
This is nearly as bad as the nightmares. They think I’m like them—but that can’t be true. Can it? CAN IT?
“Before you sit down, old son—take this,” Tennent said, pushing a small wad of paper into Redpath’s hand.
“What?” Redpath looked down and saw that he was holding a slim sheaf of banknotes. “I don’t…”
“First day’s winnings, old son—I told you Swordsmith would walk it.” Tennent gripped Redpath’s upper arms and gave him a playful shake. “I told you you wouldn’t go wrong as long as you trusted me, and this is just for starters. For tomorrow I’ve got my eye on a filly called Parsnip Bridge which is guaranteed to…”
“Leave him alone,” Betty York ordered sharply. “He hasn’t been well.”
“I was only trying to…”
“He isn’t interested in horses. Come and sit down here, love.“Betty patted the seat of the vacant easy chair next to hers. Breaking away from Tennent with a murmured apology, Redpath sat down as instructed and allowed himself to be served with tea and thick sandwiches, and all the while the coiling and uncoiling was going on inside him, restlessly, unceasingly. The worm was growing.